Original subtitles

♪

All I hear is, boom, boom, gunshots.

They set the house on fire to make it

look like an accident.

Six victims,

and two of them are unborn children.

I remember being numb.

[News] Brooke Phillips was featured in the HBO

reality show, "Cathouse."

We don't know who did this.

I wanted to know... why.

Dennis may have coined the phrase

"The Cathouse Murders"

as a way of putting the name out there.

He was using Brooke for more publicity.

Everybody was a suspect.

Dennis was the one that told me

Brooke was pregnant with his child.

I wanted somebody to go with me to the authorities.

Big break in the Oklahoma City murder investigation

that's getting national attention.

Dennis was going to go to the trial.

And he was told repeatedly,

"No, absolutely not."

He didn't care what the DA told him.

He's making a spectacle of it.

He didn't come there seeking justice for her.

He came there seeking attention.

She didn't deserve to die that way.

Nobody does.

♪ [suspenseful] ♪

[gunshots]

I just, I miss my friends.

♪ [moody pop]

♪

♪ You put me under the covers ♪

♪ For all the world to see ♪

♪ But I never recovered ♪

♪ You never cared about me ♪

♪ So now you're being uncovered ♪

♪ I kept all the receipts ♪

♪ You and all of the others ♪

♪ Under the fantasy ♪

My name is Jose, and I'm the

only living witness to The Cathouse Murders.

[Crew] Jose, marker.

♪

[Jose] I was in shock, I think, for about 5 years.

And finally, after 5 years, I cried so much.

I just sat there one day, on the anniversary of it...

and it just hit me, and I just broke down.

I, and I couldn't stop.

♪ [tense instrumental]

[Jose: exhaling sharply]

And this is the first time I'm telling my story.

[News] Breaking news as you're waking up

with us this morning.

We do want to tell you there has been a house fire.

On 56th Street, firefighters battled the

blaze before discovering 4 dead bodies

inside the Oklahoma City residence.

One man and 3 women had been shot to death.

Two of the women were pregnant.

Among the victims, a former reality TV star

on HBO's "Cathouse."

♪

I first met Brooke Phillips at

The Moonlite Bunny Ranch

in 2008.

I really liked her.

We were both from the same small town in Oklahoma.

She was a brunette.

Very pretty, very bubbly.

21 years old.

Brooke came in after seeing the show

and wanted to be a part of it.

I was her mentor,

and I showed her the Bunny Bible,

and told her about how to negotiate,

what the rules were.

And she was just a wide-eyed young girl.

I think Brooke wanted to be a star.

She had high hopes for

her life getting turned around.

♪

[Shelly] But she, uh, changed

not too long after she got there.

She dyed her hair blonde...

and changed into a different girl.

♪

[Shelly] Dennis Hof,

the owner of the Bunny Ranch,

he had a specific look he liked.

Blonde hair, red lipstick, red nails.

And, a lot of the girls would

change their appearances for him.

I only worked with her a few months before I left.

♪

[Shelly] Later on in 2009,

I was visiting in Oklahoma

with my fiancé,

at a bar.

One of my brother's friends came up to me.

I was actually pregnant at that time,

and he said a girl from Oklahoma that was

on Cathouse that was pregnant,

she had just been murdered

and he thought it was me so, he was...

frantic and calling my brother.

That's how I found out Brooke had been killed.

♪

I was home asleep.

I was on call, got the address and

responded to the scene.

♪

[Ryan] Everything was charred.

The fire department removed

four bodies out of the house.

All four victims had gunshot wounds

and were badly burned.

Once the medical examiner had made

their preliminary findings,

the victims were identified as Casey Barrientos,

Brooke Phillips, Jennifer Ermey,

and Millie Barrera.

We also found out that Millie Barrera and...

Brooke Phillips were both pregnant

at the time of their homicides.

♪

Because the death of the mother resulted in

the death of the fetus,

it's an additional murder charge,

which brought us up to six counts of

murder in the first degree.

We also received information that Brooke Phillips

was an actress on the HBO show, Cathouse.

It's the worst day in the

61-year history of the Bunny Ranch.

Everyone is in shock at The Ranch.

This young woman was just so full of life.

And now she's dead.

♪

[Shelly] I remember feeling like

the air had been knocked out of me.

I was absolutely horrified.

She must have felt terrified

right before she died.

[Caressa] It makes no sense whatsoever.

She would hurt nothing. Nothing!

[Ryan] The first thing we thought of

was to start recovering

as much evidence as possible.

♪

Once we make entry into the residence,

we see it is a complete and total loss.

There's nothing recognizable

inside the house.

The heat was extensive.

We don't know who did this.

Nobody knows why this happened.

We were looking into the victims.

Casey Barrientos was...

a major drug distributor

here in the Oklahoma City area.

Millie Barrera is 22-years-old.

She's from Mustang, Oklahoma,

and she has befriended Jennifer Ermey,

a girl from Edmond, Oklahoma.

She's 25-years-old.

Brooke Phillips is also an Oklahoma native.

She used to be a dancer at a strip club

until she began working at

the Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada.

♪

[Ryan] The police department was looking for information.

[Detective] There's a tip line set up,

a special tip line: 127-[indiscernable],

that's for calls only regarding this case.

[Ryan] We had phone calls coming in

through the tip line.

But the media had already identified Brooke Phillips

with her connections with

The Bunny Ranch in Nevada.

And also associated her with the HBO show,

The Cathouse.

[News] One of the fan favorites on Cathouse,

a 21-year-old Oklahoman.

Outgoing and friendly, no one knows why anyone

would want to harm Brooke.

[Ryan] We knew that a homicide of this nature,

with this many victims...

was going to be

front forward with the media,

but we had no idea how much the media was

going to start concentrating more on...

the relationship between the reality show and

what actually took place.

[Dennis] She's an amazing dancer.

She's got a great personality,

and everybody loved her. Everybody.

I got almost 500 emails after the show that

just aired about Brooke.

[Ryan] All of a sudden, the media dubbed this

"The Cathouse Murders" solely off of one person.

The other victims had nothing to do with The Cathouse.

♪

If I remember correctly,

Dennis is the one who coined the phrase

"The Cathouse Murders"

as a way of putting the name out there and

promoting Cathouse.

Dennis was addicted to headlines.

So, even if it was something terrible...

if it was a headline,

he really had a hard time resisting.

♪

♪

I was best friends with Brooke Phillips.

♪

The way that the press went about it,

I didn't appreciate it.

I don't think anyone appreciated it.

It was sensationalized like Brooke was like,

the main star of Cathouse.

She was only in, like, one or two

very small scenes.

♪

[Shelly] They wanted to portray Brooke Phillips

as a happy girl, the happy hooker.

We were told to smile and,

it makes everyone think that everything's okay.

But that was not true in the slightest.

This is the one that I used in-

whenever I learned how to [beep].

And it gets the [beep].

I noticed, like, when I'm, like,

feeling like I'm gonna [beep] and I want to speed up

the process, if I hold my hand like right here...

[Shelly] She drank all the time

while working at the Bunny Ranch.

♪

[Kisha] Before Brooke decided to go to

The Bunny Ranch, she was super fearless.

Snakes, spiders, all of that.

She was a huge prankster as well.

What drew people in was her energy.

It was just positive and radiant.

The world should know that she...

wasn't just who they portrayed her to be

on Cathouse and with the press.

She was more than that.

[Shelly] This is a paragraph that

Dennis Hof wrote in his book,

about Brooke Phillips: "She was completely clean.

No drugs, no alcohol, nothing.

Just a wholesome girl who also happened to be

amazing on the stripper pole."

There were a lot of damaged girls at The Ranch.

♪

And, Brooke was one of 'em.

She had a very traumatic childhood...

and she drank to cope with that.

And a lot of the girls used drugs and alcohol

to try to cope with their trauma.

[Kisha] Both of her parents struggled with addiction.

There was abuse going on

from the mother's boyfriends.

♪

[Kisha] Brooke had started doing sex work

as well as being an entertainer in the strip clubs

before she was 18.

But she never necessarily let it define her.

[Ryan] When you're dealing with a case with somebody

with a background such as...

Brooke did with the prostitution,

it can open the door for so many

different scenarios or, you know,

do we have a stalker?

Do we have a jealous person?

Do we have somebody that's furious because

their spouse had met up with her?

Was she involved in drugs?

Did she owe money to somebody?

So, there's so many things that that profession

that kind of threw extra wrenches

into an already difficult investigation,

of trying to figure out who did this.

♪

[Jose] When I saw the smoke, I knew they killed 'em...

And that they tried to set the house on fire

to make it look like an accident.

♪

I know who did it, but I don't know why.

♪

I wanted to know... why.

♪

At the very beginning of the investigation,

we were really concentrating on the evidence.

We worked for two days,

two 12-hour shifts,

sifting through all the debris,

looking for anything of any evidentiary value.

SFX: [Camera shutter clicking]

[Ryan] We found numerous spent shell casings

for various calibers, 380 and 4-40 cal.

Our ballistics analyst verified,

yes, we got two different calibers.

Multiple guns were used.

So, we knew that there was gonna be more than

one person involved in this.

We also throw in the smell of the gasoline,

the accelerant, this is an intentional fire.

Is it a domestic situation?

Is this gang-involved?

You know, has someone come into their home in the

middle of the night and done something to them?

At this stage, it's a mystery

as to what's happened.

And so, we needed to find out about these victims,

and why they were in the home that night.

[Ryan] We knew Casey Barrientos had

various ties with different street gangs, cartels.

He sold drugs,

and he had done time in prison.

[Merydith] He was living in a home

in a nice neighborhood

that was rented by Jose Fierro.

[News] Police are looking for Jose Fierro.

If you have any information on his whereabouts,

please call 415-435-7200.

♪

[Jose] I was born and raised in Oklahoma.

Grew up in a rough neighborhood.

Casey Barrientos and I grew up together.

We ended up on the same soccer team,

and we were both the same position, forwards.

And so, we kind of got...

used to each other playing sports

and then just hanging out together.

He'd come to my house after school,

and would hardly ever go home.

And one day his mom just showed up...

and told my dad that she couldn't control him.

So, my dad took him in and

he lived with us for six years.

So, he kind of became like a brother to me.

He was troubled, so was I.

We were in an alternative middle school.

My dad...

you know, got me straightened out.

And Casey, he just kept going

the wrong way. [chuckling]

He was just always in and out of jail.

In 2005, after my divorce,

I started going to strip clubs.

Sometimes Casey came with me.

I started hanging out at Night Trips.

Every girl there's like a ten or so, and uh,

you know, that's where Brooke worked.

I was a client at first.

I'd have her sit with me all night.

We eventually got close,

and trusting and, you know,

hanging out outside of Night Trips.

♪

[Shelly] We're headed to Night Trips to see

where Brooke Philips worked as a stripper

when she was trying to save up money

to become a nurse.

She had gotten pregnant when she was 16,

and had wanted to get her certified

Nurse Assistant License.

This is a nice area of Oklahoma City.

There's a lot of restaurants.

The water park is right here.

This metal box right here is Night Trips.

♪

And this is considered the nicest strip bar

in Oklahoma City.

A lot of girls will strip

before they move on

to working in a brothel.

They don't have an education or family support,

and so they do what they have to do

to take care of their kids.

And I...

I respect that.

I know how it feels because I've been there.

I was 18 years old,

and I had just started

dancing at Night Trips.

When I met Brooke Phillips,

we just started hanging out

and were inseparable from like that day.

We became roommates about a year after.

And this was one of my favorite pictures of her

from that time, this was 2005.

This is pretty much what she looked like

when I first met her.

♪

[Kisha] Brooke was a young mother,

so her focus was making sure that she had

a better life for her and her daughter.

One time, Brooke and I were watching Cathouse,

and she saw someone from her hometown,

named Shelly, on there,

and she was super excited about it.

Cathouse just fascinated Brooke.

It showed a prostitute's not just

working on the corner.

It's not like being strung out on drugs.

There are women at the Bunny Ranch

making a lot of money

who looked like they were happy.

So, when Brooke decided to go to the Bunny Ranch,

she definitely was going to use that as a catalyst

for doing more.

She thought the Bunny Ranch was going to be

her big ticket to something better.

[Shelly] "Cathouse," the HBO show,

brought in more girls.

The young girls were coming to work there

that probably would have never

even thought of working at the Bunny Ranch

if they hadn't seen the show.

Brooke Phillips was one of them.

Dennis likes to sleep with the new young girls,

so all these girls he recruited through the show

were new prospects for him to have sex with.

♪

He's their boss.

What are they supposed to say?

And nobody wanted to anger Dennis or offend his ego

because of retribution.

He was very vicious.

So, the women didn't have a choice.

♪

[Kisha] Brooke ended up coming home

less than a year later.

So, I was like, "Well, you're back already?

Like, what's going on?"

But she definitely was like, "Yeah, I'm back.

I'm pregnant."

♪

And that was the last conversation we had.

♪

[whispers] Sorry...

♪

♪

[Dennis] She came to work for us nearly two years ago.

Just recently left because she's pregnant.

[News] The owner of the ranch, Dennis Hof,

says Brooke wanted to be back home in Moore with her family.

And he says he just talked with her last week.

[Deanne] There's been a lot of talk that Brooke Phillips

was pregnant with Dennis' child.

♪

I personally have no knowledge of this,

but there are people who say that they heard it

from Dennis himself.

Dennis was the one that told me

that she was pregnant with his child.

♪

[Ryan] We don't know if Dennis Hof

was involved at this point.

Everybody was a suspect.

There was too much associated with

Casey Barrientos,

with Brooke Phillips,

and the Bunny Ranch.

So, everybody was a suspect, and we wanted to

talk to everybody, to include Dennis Hof.

♪

We had a tip line that was open.

We interviewed the victims' friends and their families.

We wanted to talk to everybody.

My partner was able to

make contact with Dennis Hof

and do an interview with him over the phone.

Dennis was very cooperative.

What he discussed was Brooke's background,

about her being pregnant, leaving the Ranch,

Bunny Ranch, to come back to Oklahoma City

to have the child.

He had indicated he thought he may be the father,

but that he had nothing to do with her death.

It's probably the most emotion

I've ever seen him express when he told me

that she was pregnant with his child.

And he choked up talking about her death.

♪

[Shelly] He was the owner, and he wanted to

have sex with the new, young girls.

And he didn't wear a condom.

♪

I definitely know Dennis Hof was not

the father of Brooke's unborn child.

I do know who it is, but I cannot say.

[Deanne] I'm not surprised he would lie about

something like that.

He would say anything to get some publicity.

[Merydith] We did not know who the father of

Brooke Phillip's unborn child was,

and pretty soon after, we knew it wasn't

consequential really to our investigation.

[Ryan] About 48 hours into the investigation,

we get a call, a phone call

from a person who was inside the house and had...

managed to escape.

[Jose] The worst was just going through my mind

and I was really afraid so, I called the, the police.

[Ryan] He was extremely concerned for his safety,

so we really had to...

sneak him in after hours

through a back alleyway.

We asked him to start from the beginning,

what all took place, what happened.

♪

[Jose] It's November 8th...

and Casey calls me to come pick him up

at the house on 56th.

Casey is like a brother to me.

So, I give him a ride to the bar

where he's gonna meet these two girls,

Millie Barrera...

and Jennifer Ermey.

Jennifer and Millie have just met

very recently and,

this is the first time they're kind of

going out together.

They're at Henry Hudson's,

a local...

blue-collar kind of bar, and they hung out there

with Casey, with Jose.

[Jose] And we started drinking.

♪

We were all having fun, and it's about closing time

for the bar, and I get a phone call from Brooke,

so I answer it 'cause I hadn't heard from her

in such a long time.

And I said, "Hey, Crazy. What are you doing?"

And she was like, "Hey, um, can you come pick me up?"

[Merydith] And Jose leaves because he's gotten a call

from Brooke Phillips,

who's having trouble with a john,

and so he's going to go meet her.

♪

[Jose] When I picked Brooke up,

we started talking and then she tells me she was pregnant.

I was in shock.

[Merydith] Brooke, she wanted to go

stay with Jose that night.

And he told her,

"I'm staying at Casey's home tonight.

We're waking up early tomorrow morning."

They were going to Denver to a Monday night NFL game.

And so, they go to Casey's house.

[Ryan] We asked him, "What was your intention?

What do you want to take her home for?"

And he goes, "You know..." We're like, "Why,

were you trying to be romantic with her?"

He goes, "Yeah."

♪

[Jose] So, we go to the bedroom

and we start undressing.

♪

And then, somebody starts knocking on the door.

♪

[knocking continues]

And I told her that I'm not gonna answer it because

any time somebody came to that house,

Casey would either call me

and let me know to go let them in,

or go handle some kind of business for him.

♪

[Merydith] In the meantime, back at Henry Hudson's bar,

Casey, Jennifer, and Millie,

they hung out there until last call.

And when they shut the bar down at two...

Casey, Jennifer, and Millie leave together.

♪

[Jose] We're messing around, um, we're, you know,

hot and heavy.

They just kept knocking and knocking.

[knocking]

We put our clothes on, and I was like,

"Just let me go see who it is."

[knocking]

So, I go peek out the front door,

and I see David Tyner.

He goes by "Hooligan."

And he was Casey's bodyguard at the time.

He was an MMA fighter.

He was a former marine.

♪

[Ryan] Hooligan was looking for Casey.

Jose told him he was not there.

He would normally not let anybody come in and sit,

but he knew Hooligan and he trusted Hooligan.

[Jose] I told him that Casey would be home from the bar

any time, and, you know,

you just wait in the living room.

And then I go back to the bedroom,

and we start messing around again.

And now I hear...

Casey coming in to the front door with the

two girls that he had left the bar with.

♪

So, Brooke hears the girls, and says,

"I want to, uh, see who it is."

♪

[Merydith] Brooke wants to go out and talk to the girls

who have come home with Casey,

so she leaves that room.

[Jose] And I'm like, "Ugh!"

And then the music comes on,

and I'm just still kind of sitting there waiting for her

to come back to the bedroom.

And then, um, all I hear is,

"Oh, what the [beep]?!"

♪ [suspenseful]

[gunshots]

[Jose] And, boom, boom, just gunshots.

And I froze.

It was just ongoing,

like just shot, after shot, after shot, after shot.

[gunshots]

[Jose] I went numb from, like, my knees down.

I didn't know what to do.

♪

[gunshots]

Until I didn't hear any more gunshots.

The last gunshot I heard, actually,

a hole came through the door of the room, and I...

just got up and took off running through the left door.

He ran out a back door

to the room where he was at,

which led to the garage.

[Jose] I hit the button to the garage door opener.

[whirring]

And I ran to the garage door.

I didn't even let it finish raising up, I dove under it,

and then when I got up to start running,

here comes Hooligan.

[Ryan] He turns round, Hooligan's chasing after him

telling him to come back.

And Hooligan puts up his hands,

and says, "I'm not, not after you!"

[Jose] I kept running because

there's no way I'm going to believe that.

[Merydith] Hooligan takes off after Jose Fierro.

He starts running after him down the street.

But Fierro is like a soccer player.

He's incredibly quick.

[Jose] I ran pretty hard to the, like,

two houses over...

jumped in a backyard, and I ran to the yard

over to the next street.

♪

[Merydith] Jose Fierro is running for his life

through backyards, on these one-acre lots.

♪

[Jose] There was a big tree

that I climbed up and sat in,

so I could see the streets to see if anybody was

walking around looking for me

or any cars driving around.

[Ryan] He waited there until he smelled smoke.

He noticed that it was coming from the

direction of the house.

[Merydith] He starts to get scared,

and then gets down out of the tree and continues to run.

[sirens]

[Jose] I heard sirens.

And I just started thinking, like,

man, I hope they're okay.

And then I understood that they killed them,

and that they tried to set the house on fire

to make it look like an accident.

I was like, "Oh no, oh no, oh no."

[Ryan] He decided at that point it was time to go find

some place he can stay safe and stay hidden.

[Merydith] And so, Jose continues to run

towards his grandmother's home.

[Jose] When I got to my grandma's house,

I started knocking softly on the window right there.

And then my Uncle Mario comes out and answers the door.

I said, "Hey, Uncle, I'm in some trouble.

I need to use the phone." I called, um, a lawyer.

I told him, you know, I know what happened,

but I wanted somebody to go with me to the authorities.

♪

[Ryan] Jose Fierro, he gave us David Tyner

on a golden platter.

♪

[Ryan] We decide it's time to move quick,

and we issued an arrest warrant for

David Tyner for the murders.

We had gotten word that he fled the state

shortly after the homicides.

So, I contacted the U.S. Marshal services.

[News] A big break in the Oklahoma City

murder investigation that's getting national attention.

A suspect wanted in the murder of six people,

including a reality TV star, is now in custody.

Investigators say he knew

he was a wanted man and gave up.

[Ryan] He had turned himself in to

the Pryor police department,

and was taken into custody.

♪

[Merydith] He's transported down here to Oklahoma City,

and he won't talk.

He won't talk to law enforcement.

He won't really tell his attorneys even what happened.

♪

[Ryan] At this point, it was still unclear

why everything happened inside that house,

and why everybody was left murdered.

♪

[Merydith] The problem is that Jose Fierro

only saw Hooligan.

And while Hooligan pleads guilty to the homicides,

he does that without

giving the state of Oklahoma,

or any law enforcement, any idea as to what

actually happened inside of that home.

There's a 40-caliber gun and two 380s,

so we have at least three guns in the home.

So, we knew it wasn't

just Hooligan who killed everyone.

♪

So, after Hooligan is sent off to prison,

we continue working to make sure that

everybody involved is held responsible.

And we knew that Hooligan's tie...

to Casey was Denny Phillips,

and we start ramping up the investigation

directed at Denny Phillips.

[Ryan] He had a...

vast, dangerous, mean background.

A lot of assaults.

[Merydith] Denny met Casey in prison.

And at the time,

Denny Phillips is head of this

Native American prison gang here in Oklahoma,

The Indian Brotherhood.

And so, when they both get out of prison,

Casey becomes a supplier for Denny Phillips.

And then, there had been a falling out

between Casey and Denny because

Denny was skimming off the top...

when he would take drugs or money back and forth.

So, Denny Phillips...

wants to kill Casey.

[Ryan] We began researching the Indian Brotherhood,

and then we find out David Tyner, Hooligan,

was what they call a prospect.

So, prospects usually have to do the bad stuff

to become part of the gang.

♪

[Merydith] The detectives and the investigators

continue to dig and find,

to get in the Indian Brotherhood,

Denny Phillips told Hooligan

he had to take out Casey Barrientos.

♪

After three years in maximum security prison,

Hooligan was done being the fall-person

for Denny Phillips.

He was done taking it all on himself.

So, the detectives decide

they're gonna take a run at Hooligan.

And so, they travel to where he is

and they talk to him.

[Ryan] We sat down, identified ourselves.

He knew who we were.

And then we dove right into the meat and potatoes:

"Hey, this is why we're here."

[Merydith] And sure enough,

he's decided that he'll talk.

[News] It has been a long seven-year wait for the

families and victims of The Cathouse Murders

that happened back in 2009.

♪

[Merydith] At this point, we're years into the

investigation and the detectives travel

to where Hooligan is in prison.

And sure enough, Hooligan tells them about

Denny Phillips setting up this entire thing.

[Ryan] According to Hooligan,

Denny had decided he wanted to get

more than what Casey was offering,

they were having issues with money,

over drug sales.

[Merydith] And so, Hooligan

tells the detectives,

for him to get into the Indian Brotherhood,

Hooligan needed to rob and kill Casey.

[Ryan] Casey Barrientos was the target.

And, Hooligan tells my partner and I

there were two other people involved.

[Merydith] Hooligan was...

not the only shooter inside of that house.

♪

John Cochran...

And Russell Hogshooter.

Russell Hogshooter, he's part of the Indian Brotherhood,

and so, is no stranger to being in trouble.

John Cochran, he is...

smalltown, not educated, and...

met Hooligan while working construction.

And so, on November the 9th, 2009,

Hooligan, and Russell Hogshooter,

and John Cochran,

they travel to Oklahoma City to rob Casey Barrientos.

♪

[Jose] I had no idea.

You know, I just opened the door, let him in.

[Knocking]

Because Hooligan is, uh, Casey's bodyguard.

I told him to just sit on the couch

and wait for Casey to come home.

[Merydith] Once Hooligan is in the home,

he contacts Denny...

who's sitting in his car, orchestrating the hit.

And tells him, "Jose Fierro's here.

But there's girls here.

We can't do this right now."

And it was at that point that Denny Phillips told him,

"I will kill your family if you don't do this."

♪

[Ryan] According to David, once he gets in,

he's in the house when all of a sudden,

Cochran and Hogshooter

come in through the back door.

♪

[Ryan] David Tyner states that

he ended up shooting Casey right off the bat

'cause he was closest to him.

[gunshots]

And then, he shot Jennifer Ermey

and Millie Barrera...

[gunshots]

And that Brooke Phillips

was shot by Russell Hogshooter.

[gunshots]

♪

[News] A second man has been charged in the 2009 killing

of a reality TV star and three other people.

Denny Edward Phillips was charged with six counts of

first-degree murder because

two of the victims were pregnant.

Phillips is currently being held in a federal prison.

[Merydith] Then John Cochran and Russell Hogshooter

were arrested and charged.

Pretty quickly, we...

made a plea deal with John Cochran.

♪

[Ryan] Denny Phillips and Russel Hogshooter,

they want a trial.

They want to try to beat it.

And then we received information that Dennis Hof

was going to come down and come to the trial.

We didn't want that.

We didn't want him coming in,

parading around with the cameras,

drawing attention to himself and...

focusing the spotlight on Brooke Phillips.

You know, you could have that one juror that says,

"Well, based on what she's done in her past,

you know, she's a bad person,

therefore these guys are okay."

You know, you just don't know.

You never know what you're gonna get with a jury.

♪ [suspenseful]

[Merydith] So, with the seriousness of the case,

more than 50 witnesses,

cooperating inmates,

cooperating accomplices...

there's so many moving parts.

But in the background,

The Bunny Ranch in Nevada

is blowing up our phones here,

wanting Dennis Hof

to have his moment in the sun.

And he kept saying,

"We got to jump on the bandwagon here.

This is a great opportunity."

And he was going to go,

planning to go to the trial.

[Merydith] And he was told repeatedly,

"No. Absolutely not."

[Deanne] The DA told him, "Don't go to this trial

because we don't want the jury to see this woman

as being a prostitute.

We want them to see a human being,

a woman who was pregnant, who was murdered."

♪

[Merydith] The effect that it could have on a case

is huge.

Oklahoma is a red state.

There are people who

we could potentially have on a jury

who might think, "Well, if you're involved in

those kinds of professions,

you kind of get what you deserve."

It doesn't matter what she did for a living.

She didn't deserve to die.

And especially that way. Nobody does.

♪

[Ryan] But, you never know with a jury.

[Merydith] The best thing for this case is

for him not to show up.

[Ryan] But he shows up.

[Ryan] When Dennis Hof decides

to come to the trial,

he shows up in his red and black bowling shirt

with his hat on with bright white "HBO"

on the head.

He's doing just what you'd think.

He's looking for the camera,

and the camera's looking for him.

[Dennis] And I had to be here.

If, if there's...

if there's an afterlife, and uh...

she came up to me, and said, "Why weren't you there?"

I wouldn't have an answer.

He notified the media, before,

that he was coming.

He didn't care what the DA told him.

I saw him in the news.

He sat there and pretended that he cared about her,

pretending to be upset.

But they were crocodile tears.

[Dennis] This is like the saddest day of my life.

[Ryan] Now he's in front of the camera, now it's,

"All the attention's about me.

I'm Dennis Hof. I have these feelings.

I lost somebody, it's about me.

Come talk to me."

He's making a spectacle of it.

♪

[Deanne] There was no line

that Dennis wouldn't cross

if he thought it was beneficial.

One of Dennis's favorite lines I heard him say

over and over, "What's in it for me?

What's in it for me?"

♪

[Merydith] He's giving interviews out in the hallway

and, you know, all of these families of these victims

are having to walk past that.

[Ryan] And I know that the families that...

of these victims didn't appreciate it.

They lost their loved ones,

and now we've got somebody down here

trying to make a buck off of it.

[Deanne] He wanted to attach himself to a story that

had nothing to do with him, so he could promote himself

and promote his book.

[Merydith] He brought a copy of it with him,

and had signed the inside cover,

and written a, a note

to our elected district attorney.

[Ryan] And it went right where it should have been,

it went straight into the trash can.

The prosecuting district attorney

kicked him out of there, and to Dennis' credit,

he did leave.

♪

[News] Denny Edward Phillips and Russell Lee Hogshooter

were each convicted of six counts of

first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy.

[Merydith] Denny Phillips and Russell Hogshooter

received the same sentence:

life without parole

on every count that David Tyner received.

Two incredibly violent men, and dangerous men,

are gonna die in prison.

[Merydith] The victims didn't deserve to die.

They didn't deserve to die in that way.

And to make sure that everyone involved in that...

doesn't have the opportunity to hurt other people

in our community like that anymore,

that's a victory.

[Ryan] If we just gave up after we had Hooligan,

there's three people that would've never gotten

held accountable for what they did.

So, it's...

you know, it is satisfying to get them,

but more importantly, it gave the family closure,

it gave the families the understanding

of what happened.

♪

[Jose] The last image I have of Brooke is just,

you know, laying next to me.

She's just naturally beautiful.

And, uh...

she uh...

Yeah, she's embedded in my mind all the time.

♪

[Shelly] You can see there's a new house...

because the old one burned.

But this is the location

where Brooke Phillips was killed.

♪

[car door closing]

♪

[Shelly] It's a little bit eerie standing here.

♪

Brooke Phillips was way more than just a working girl

at the Bunny Ranch.

She had a whole life ahead of her.

I can't believe she's gone.

♪

[Kisha] Brooke had so much to give,

so much more growing to do.

♪

She never even called herself a prostitute.

She was just more than that.

She was a student, she was a mother,

she was a niece, she was a daughter,

a granddaughter, a friend.

So much more than...

what she did for a couple of years out of her,

you know, already short life.

I did become close with her daughter.

I attended her graduation,

and she was valedictorian.

Brooke would be so proud.

[Sighing]

Well, I just, you know,

I miss Casey all the time.

I miss Brooke.

I feel guilty because I let that guy in the door,

like, I didn't know they had a falling out...

If he'd 'a just told me...

I wouldn't have let him in.

So, to this day, it just kind of haunts me.

I get a lot of [beep] from people, like,

"Why aren't you dead if you let him in?

Like why didn't they kill you?"

And to me that's a good question.

I don't know why.

But, uh, I just, I miss my friends.

♪

[Sighing]

I just, I miss them.

♪

[Phone ringing]

[Operator] 9-1-1, what is your emergency?

[Woman] Um, we need an ambulance.

It's the Love Ranch out in Crystal, Nevada.

[News] Fox News Alert as former NBA all-star

Lamar Odom is in the hospital and said to be

breathing on a respirator.

They knew Lamar Odom

on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

We know that Lamar and Khloe had split up and that

he had sort of gone down a dark path.

Dennis Hof told her to get whatever Lamar needed,

and to try to keep him there longer.

They wanted him to spend more money.

There were always rumors about his drug use.

But now it got out of control

when he wouldn't wake up.

[Deanne] Lamar was foaming at the mouth,

and he was unconscious.

Now he's almost dead and...

Dennis was taking every interview he could.

[Dennis] "Are you gonna do any media?" And I said,

"Yes, I'm gonna go on the Nancy Grace Show."

And they said, "Please don't do that.

We'd rather have Khloe, uh, say what needs to be said."

I told her to go to hell.

[Deanne] He was baiting her with everything he could

so that there would be a big media war.

We're going to tell you the real story about

the Lamar Odom party.

Exactly what happened.